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Metro: Reinforcing Misogyny Through Piss-Poor Writing

I get the Metro as often as I can. We use it for lining the cat litter trays. Ballerina Cat, the well-known Twitter sensation for her malicious incontinence policies, will not use a litter box which any other cat has used. We have 4 cats. This is expensive. Not that this is in any way relevant to this post. I just wanted to point out why I was “reading” the Metro which is usually misogynistic bolloxs. As an excuse you see.

Anyways, Thursday’s Metro involved a truly brilliant article entitled “Doctor ‘drowns’ girl for research”. This is it in its entirety:

A paediatrician accused of waterboarding his stepdaughter could have been conducting an experiment, court papers suggest. Dr Melvin Morse, 58, denies he brought the 11 year old girl “to a possible near-death state from the simulation of drowning” by holding her head under a tap. The American is known for research into children’s near-death experiences and this “would fall into the area of study he practises’, Delaware police said. The allegations emerged after he was arrested for reportedly dragging the girl by her ankle across a driveway in July.

I’m going to guess that this “article” is just quoting sections of the court documents given by the defence but really, could the Metro have been more on the justification of torture side of things? Being involved in research on near-death experiences by children isn’t permission to waterboard your stepdaughter. It isn’t permission to drag a child by their ankle across a driveway. This is an abusive man abusing a child.

Now, I’m sure it wasn’t quite the Metro’s intention to suggest that Morse was justified in waterboarding his stepdaughter. It’s just a poorly written filler-column. Problem is that these kinds of twaddle slip through in the Metro all the time. It would have been really simple to have clearly stated “court papers submitted by the defence” or “prosecutor’s a dipstick” or “the police are just stupid”. By writing the article in this manner, the Metro is basically saying that a violent, abusive man is justified in being violent because he’s a “scientist”.

I’m sure his stepdaughter, you know that child whose only ELEVEN, will be pleased to understand that her torture is justified in the name of science.